Flutterby™! From 2007-11-01 to 2007-11-30

Violet Blue looks at Senator Orrin Hatch's prioritizing the war on free speech over the war on terror.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Some whimsical sculptures made from oranges, and some awesome carved eggshell art.

[ related topics: Art & Culture ]

This has to be one of the most expensive VW Buses I've ever seen! $65,000 and it doesn't even run (but that's not unusual for a VW).

[ related topics: Photography Art & Culture Public Transportation ]

Fresh Air interview with Peter Sagal on his effort The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them). I'm a fan of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, this sounds like I'm gonna have to read it.

[ related topics: Books Sexual Culture ]

Reading the comments to Michael Bauer's ramble about double digit cocktail prices, I ran across this line describing the size of drinks at one establishment:

...a glasss you can really wrap your liver around..

Apparently piracy off the coast of Somalia is heating up again. I saw one report that sailors from a US destroyer boarded a North Korean vessel there the other day and helped the crew mop up a gang of locals who had tried to capture the ship. Now Popular Mechanics reports that the US may make use of armed robot speedboats to help in checking out suspicious vessels. Hmm...Robots vs. Pirates sounds like the setup for a Japanese anime......

[ related topics: Robotics Current Events Machinery ]

So I'm seeing various spam with randomly generated strings, and I know I shouldn't say this publicly but I'm wondering if anyone's thought yet to take the Markov chains of a well trained spam filter and use those to create text strings that are as anti-spam as possible.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Spam Monty Python ]

MySpace and Google team up on OpenSocial, but I'm betting that if it's actually useful, then SixApart will implement it first.

[ related topics: Social Software ]

Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr, commander of the Enola Gay, dead at 92.

Gen Tibbets had asked for no funeral nor headstone as he feared opponents of the bombing may use it as a place of protest, the friend, Gerry Newhouse, said.

If you wanna know why I often distance myself from "anti-war" organizations, even when I'm against the U.S. involvement in a specific conflict, that's one of the reasons.

[ related topics: History Current Events War ]

"They are looking for leadership. Sacrifice = Victory." - Donald Rumsfeld.

Hey, Apple! It'd be really freakin' nice if y'all wouldn't keep moving your documents around randomly. Mostly it's fine, I can just use Google's cache, but every once in a while I find a PDF (and what sort of lazy *&^%$#@ bozo uses PDFs for documentation? PDFs are for documents that you don't want people to actually be able to use) that has all the critical stuff in it, and I find that you've done yet another stupid documentation reorg on your servers and rather than being taken to the document I asked for, or even a useful document, I'm being redirected to the blackhole, http://developer.apple.com/index.html , where I'll be forced to dig through chapter headings for ages to try to find the one line that I was trying to confirm.

I'll ask it yet again: Why do Apple and Microsoft lead the market despite doing their absolute best to make development on either of their platforms as difficult as possible relative to the open source world? Clearly, not only do they hate developers, reason and logic, but their customers hate developers, reason and logic.

[ related topics: Free Software Apple Computer Microsoft moron Macintosh ]

Rice promises Turkey more action against PKK. I'll just quote Dan Savage:

See How That Works? US pledges to assist our allies the Turks in their battles against our allies the Kurds.

[ related topics: Politics moron Current Events ]

I just ran top to see if I could figure out why this Mac tower (with, I'll admit, a strong point, the gorgeous Apple cinema display) was such a dog when compiling, and part of that lead to How to disable (and enable) Dashboard. If 30% of your CPU (and probably some amount of I/O) isn't worth having something idling that basically has a couple of web pages loaded in it. Firefox'll do the same thing for a third of that. After disabling and re-enabling, it's barely using any CPU at all, so something else is at work here... Still a good tip for you laptop users where the F12 is an easier accidental overstrike than on the desktop keyboards.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Macintosh ]

I haven't managed to catch the birthdays of all of the blogs I read or read back in the earlier years, but Happy 8^th to Backup Brain!

Hackety Hack, Ruby for 13 and up, coding examples apparently include a simple blog, IM software, and downloading YouTube videos. Via.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Weblogs Software Engineering ]

I lucked out, I got selected for jury duty for a 2 day trial. So I both get to do my civic duty, and have it over soon. Report when I can talk about it.

Kinda hard to argue hardship over 2 days when there was selection for a 6 month case happening a few courtrooms over...

One quick one before I head off to jury duty: Bicycle drifting (alt and You Tube copy). The amount of control this guy exhibits at such a high and smooth cadence is really cool!

[ related topics: Video Bicycling ]

Since I just spent two days in the previously maligned here Marin Civic Center, where running jokes about the deficiencies of Frank Lloyd Wright's design abilities are the norm and the courtrooms look like you're in the process of being abducted by aliens, this seems like it's good that they got it early: MIT sues architect Frank Gehry and his design firm over problems in new Stata Center building:

The suit says that MIT paid Los Angeles-based Gehry Partners $15 million to design the Stata Center, which was hailed by critics as innovative and eye-catching with its unconventional walls and radical angles. But soon after its completion in spring 2004, the center's outdoor amphitheater began to crack due to drainage problems, the suit says. Snow and ice cascaded dangerously from window boxes and other projecting roof areas, blocking emergency exits and damaging other parts of the building, according to the suit. Mold grew on the center's brick exterior, the suit says, and there were persistent leaks throughout the building.

[ related topics: moron Current Events Architecture Architecture - Frank Lloyd Wright ]

I'm going to write something longer up on my recent experience of jury duty. This was the first time I actually got through voire dire and got seated on the jury, and thence followed the case all the way through to verdict, but the particulars were deciding on a possible violation of California Vehicle Code section 14601.2:

Driving When Privilege Suspended or Revoked for Driving Under the Influence, With Excessive Blood Alcohol, or When Addicted

14601.2. (a) No person shall drive a motor vehicle at any time when that person's driving privilege is suspended or revoked for a conviction of a violation of Section 23152 or 23153 if the person so driving has knowledge of the suspension or revocation.

(b) Except in full compliance with the restriction, no person shall drive a motor vehicle at any time when that person's driving privilege is restricted, if the person so driving has knowledge of the restriction.

Note that "...if the person so driving has knowledge of the restriction." We acquitted the defendant, based on that clause and things that that may or may not have occurred in the Contra Costa court system. I'm not sure how to rewrite that, but I want to ask my state legislator to lessen the mitigating strength of intent in that passage.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Law California Culture ]

On the CartoTalk list, someone pointed out these amazing fantasy cartographies. I'm actually surprised Chris Wayan's art hasn't shown up on Flutterby before. The art concepts are all drawn from his dreams. The site seems to go on forever!

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Art & Culture ]

West Coast Classic VW Restoration for the old VW fetishists fans among us, including a whole bunch of old bus restorations.

[ related topics: California Culture Public Transportation ]

Something I'd love to have on the Mac, but would be nice on any platform: A "what was that sound?" log. The Macs are constantly making noises that are clearly trying to inform me of something, be it an inbound email or an inbound chat or something else, I've figured out (and turned off) most of 'em, but there are still one or two "WTF?" sounds that I'm trying to figure out.

[ related topics: Macintosh ]

C|N>K: Gloria Brame has a picture of an Ohio street sign forcing change on Gay.

[ related topics: Humor Sexual Culture ]

I'm reading Alan Turing: The Enigma, by Andrew Hodges, so for the next few you're going to be subjected to quotes from one of the ancestors of digital computing:

No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.

(from p.251, describing a discussion on the future of computing in the lunchroom of AT&T in 1943)

[ related topics: Quotes Community Cryptography Phreaking ]

$300 block on-demand dry ice maker for economical use (Via ToolMonger, with a picture). Because you know you need an on-demand dry ice maker.

Alan Turing QOTD, from a talk on February 20^th 1946 to the London Mathematical Society:

The masters are liable to get replaced because as soon as any technique becomes at all stereotyped it becomes possible to devise a system of instruction tables which will enable the electronic computer to do it for itself. It may happen however that the masters will refuse to do this. They may be unwilling to let their jobs be stolen from them in this way. int hat case they would surround the whole of their work with mystery and make excuses, couched in well chosen gibberish, whenever any dangerous suggestions were made. I think that a reaction of this kind is a very real danger. This topic naturally leads to the question as to how far it is in principle possible for a computing machine to simulate human activities.

(From Alan Turing: The Enigma, by Andrew Hodges, p.357) Pretty amazing that he could see Java and many of the modern "software engineering" techniques coming half a century in advance, hey?

[ related topics: Quotes Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Mathematics Cryptography ]

There was a request to start an anchor topic to host discussions about presidential candidates other than Ron Paul. I think most people want to discuss platform issues. Ya know. I don't really care, at this point, about any platform. I'd just like to find the candidates that have the skills to run this country. As of right now the only two I have any faith in that could do that is Bill Richardson and Mike Huckabee.

I think Bill Richardson has demonstrated his abilities to run government through his terms as governor of New Mexico. I think he has demonstrated his ability to understand foreign policy and diplomacy through his tenure as an ambassador to the UN. What can the other candidates offer to counter this experience?

Now discuss away.

[ related topics: Politics Immigration ]

Mike Huckabee might be a stretch for some of the readers here to take seriously as a presidential candidate, he's a former Southern Baptist minister who believes strongly in the sanctity of life and he will tell you straight up:

My faith is my life - it defines me. I don't separate my faith from my personal and professional lives.

Still, I like him. He seems to be genuine and he's got about the best fiscal head on his shoulders of any of the Republican candidates I've seen. He has been a two term governor of Arkansas and has also held the office of Lt. Governor. He left office earlier this year with an $800 million surplus in the Arkansas treasury.

Now discuss.

[ related topics: Religion Politics red neck culture ]

Another quote from Alan Turing, writing in November of 1946:

How can the rules of a machine change? They should describe completely how the machine will react whatever its history might be, whatever chagnes it might undergo. The rules are thus quite time-invariant. ... The explanation of the paradox is that the rules which get changed in the learning process are of a rather less pretentious kind, claiming only an ephemeral validity. The reader may draw a parallel with the Constitution of the United States.

Quoted in Alan Turing: The Enigma, by Andrew Hodges, p.359.

[ related topics: Quotes Writing Law Civil Liberties Cryptography Education ]

I was hired about nine months ago to write regular blog entries for a website. The site is mainly a portal for advertising - the blog content was to be the draw. I wasn't being paid a huge sum but I thought the concept was good and it a topic I find easy to write about. Well, it took their "site administrator" about three months to get WordPress running. And when they did, I was given a username and password (that I couldn't change) and told to go at it. I had signed a "contract" saying I would write three entries every week for six months. After the first entry, I realized that I couldn't add my own categories, so I stopped tagging my entries. I had an email exchange with the guy who was my contact over that but it never changed.

I was also supposed to respond to comments. To make sure, I setup an RSS feed in my RSS reader so I could quickly reply. Of course, over the six months the only comments were from blog-spammers - clearly automated responses like "Dude, I agree with "TITLE OF THE POST". Check out my site <link TO PORN SITE>." Which I dutifully cleaned out every few weeks.

I just tried to log on and found that my password no longer works. I pulled up the original email to make sure I was entering it correctly and saw that the date of the original email was exactly six months ago. So I guess my term is up.

Oh yeah, it took them two months to finally mail a check to me for the first half of my pay. Since I only managed an average of 1.5 posts a week over the six months, I somehow suspect they won't pay me the pay the other half. It's kind of hard to maintain enthusiasm when the site owners aren't really making any effort to direct traffic. I checked the blogs of the other two people they hired and they have exactly two posts each - the initial bio that we emailed in and one post, I guess, to test that the password worked. So I guess I was the star writer...

[ related topics: Content Management Weblogs Writing Consumerism and advertising ]

Since most of us don't even get the Monday off any more, it's easy to miss this, but take a moment today to thank someone who served.

The San Francisco Police Department is having trouble getting new recruits, largely because the vast majority have a history of recreational drug use:

"We are losing a significant number of our recruits in the early stages of the background check," says Sgt. Dennis Callaghan, who is in charge of the background unit. "A substantial number of candidates fail to meet our drug policy."

[ related topics: Drugs Bay Area Law Enforcement California Culture ]

I recently put Ubuntu Studio on my HP zd7000 laptop and was amazed at the array of musical/midi tools and software. Enough that when I saw a fair price on an Axiom 61 USB MIDI Controller (aka a Keyboard.. or "Surface") I bought it. It came with a CD with Windows software (Ableton Live) so I fired up WinXP, installed the latest drivers from the web, installed Ableton, and just could not get it to work. It seems to not want to recognize the keyboard as a MIDI input. Ableton sucked at figuring out what was wrong, so I downloaded MIDI-OX which promptly said: No Midi Inputs Available. I screwed with WinXP for a while and figured I might just have a bad keyboard, this should have "just worked".

Boot Ubuntu Studio. Start JackD, Started ZynAddSubFX and patch the Axiom 61 magically listed in "available midi inputs" into ZynAddSubFX (which I had played with pre-real-keyboard, it has a virtual keyboard) and start playing. Oh, what fun, lots of sounds.. weird adjustments.. play a few tunes, realize I have forgotten what little I knew.

Start up: hydrogen the drum machine for Linux. Patch the Axiom 61 to it via Jack. The drum pads on the keyboard work, and I can make some drum loops.. play sounds on the keyboard. Nirvana.

I need to tweak some to get Rosegarden working, seems FluidSynth and JackD are bumping into each other.. but what a fun rush. The dangerous part is it's addictive, I can literally play for hours and hours just for fun. And Linux just blew off WinXP's USB ports and drivers thanks to some incredible Linux coders that make things that just work.

[ related topics: Free Software Music Microsoft Open Source Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment ]

On Saturday, Charlene and I went to a HAM "class" and test. They gave us this many page sheet of questions and answers and said "read through this 5 times, you'll pass". Charlene and I sat down and started working through it, after an hour and a half we both knew the first three pages solidly, but we looked at the size of the rest of the booklet and Charlene said "there's no way". So I said "Okay, let's take a walk, I'll read it, mumble out loud, you don't worry about it." We walked around Hamilton Field, I mumbled out loud while I studied, and when we got back and took the test both of us passed. We both have our Technician (lowest level) licenses.

Which means we should both now get the jokes at HamGreetings.com, greeting cards for HAMs (Via Laurel Krahn).

Next up: Actually learning what all that crap we managed to check off correctly on the multiple choice test actually means, figuring out what radios to get, and learning about the communications nets that pop up for disaster preparedness stuff.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Education ]

Yet another Alan Turing quote, from Alan Turing: The Enigma, by Andrew Hodges, p378:

It is related that the infant Gauss was asked at school to do the addition 15 + 18 + 21 + ... + 54 (or something of the kind) and that he immediately wrote down 483, presumably having calculated it as (15+54)(54-12)/2.3 ... One can ... imagine a situation where the children were given a number of additiuons to do, of which the first 5 were all arithmetic progressions, but the 6th was say 23+34+45+...+100+112+122...+199. Gauss might have given the answer to this as if it were an arithmetic progression, not having noticed that the 9th term was 112 instead of 111. This would be a definite mistake, which the less intelligent children would not have been likely to make.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Mathematics Education ]

Yeah, that was so unfair: Toyota pulls Prius ad that jabbed at Fresno:

The commercial depicts people driving the fuel-efficient Prius in an imagined future in which "gas stations will become nothing more than low-budget tourist stops. Like ghost towns ... or Fresno."

Now if they'd said Bakersfield... Snicker.

[ related topics: Humor California Culture ]

I'm offically working two large projects for a while. My hope is that the second one gets beyond 'Phase I' and ends up being something that requires hiring a handful of talented uber-geeks and up and coming wannabe's to do once it has some paying customers. I violated a rule of mine: unpaid development/phase I work. I've been bumping into the client for about two years, he's established in his niche and trying to evolve past it. He's also "good people" and pretty bright and has paid for a development system. The payment processing and collections side is rather boring, but something I'm good at. the interesting part is a reason to play with ZigBee, and the fun of turning on and off a houses electrical power/meter as well as some other kewl toys. So, for the record, other than Nancy being #1 top priority, my next two are: NextKnowledge (great system, website sucks, not my job), and UtiliJuice (website sucks, name may change soon, and site IS my job).

Now if only I was good at juggling.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama History Work, productivity and environment Heinlein California Culture Clowns Real Estate ]

Idea of the moment: I'm at an Apple performance workshop, they bring a bunch of developers in and put us all in front of computers. We're packed in a little tighter than normal, so there are laptops interspersed with the desktop, and my coworker instinctively reached for his mouse, his hand hit his cell phone, and he tried to move his cursor. It didn't work, but... This seems like the "must have" iPhone hack: It's got a camera, so you can put it on its back and (if there's light there) it should be able to sense motion (if not, maybe you could use the accelerometers), it's got Bluetooth, so it should be possible to make it look like a wireless mouse, and the newer Apple mice sense button from your finger position anyway. Someone needs to hack the iPhone to work as a mouse.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Wireless iPhone ]

This Story about embedding sound in road noise strips is an old idea of mine, but I think that they could be advertiser sponsored. I think simple words could be encoded ranging from a road side warning noise strip that says: StarBucks Coffee, Starbucks Coffee.. over and over again..

Of course, they can be different on each side of the road. On one side it could say; Budweiser, Budweiser, Budweiser.. and the other side: Jack Daniels, Jack Daniels.. Jack..

I can see the scene now, as the emergency crew pulls you from the wreckage of you car as it ran off the road: "dude.. last thing I remember was hearing the Budweiser frogs.... then BAM I hit the guard-rail.. "

[ related topics: Content Management Consumerism and advertising Beer Automobiles Cryptography Trains ]

Because I am completely immersed in things Apple and Mac for three days: Installing MySQL on Ubuntu (The Mark Pilgrim way) is a response to Installing MySQL on Mac OS/X, Via Genehack. Especially given some "Panther" experiences, it was laugh out loud (and I'm sitting in a room with a bunch of other people hacking on code) funny.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Humor Open Source Macintosh Databases ]

Caught a ride down to Apple today with Marty, who had a TomTom portable navigation system. Nice bright color touch screen, looks like a decent processor, GPS. Might make an interesting platform. The OpenTom project has all sorts of code to develop Linux apps on the platform.

[ related topics: Free Software Apple Computer Open Source Maps and Mapping ]

Video of an awesome (and freaky) back-to-back tandem. Thanks, Shadow.

[ related topics: Video Bicycling - Tandem ]

Muir Beach man cited for cleaning up oil spill:

"You don't have to be trained to do this," he said. "We had on gloves and we didn't feel there was a health risk. It just lifted up from the sand like it was in kitty litter. They came late with only five people. We felt that anything we could do is better than nothing."

Moser said he declined three orders to halt his activities before he was cited.

[ related topics: Health Nature and environment ]

Medley points out this exchange with Hillary Clinton

BLITZER: You say national security is more important than human rights. Senator Clinton, what do you say?

CLINTON: I agree with that completely. ...

From this transcript of the CNN Democratic debate in Las Vegas. Now maybe there's some nuance there about the definition of "human rights", but the purpose of the state should be to protect the rights of its citizens. If that's not the purpose of the state, then we're back to the old Europe (and other places) where the citizens are subsumed into "the needs of the state", and are expendable for the glory of the enterprise.

[ related topics: Politics moron Civil Liberties ]

The last few days I've been immersed in all things Apple. This has resulted in various exchanges, including at least one "this chair seems to be broken, I can't raise it"/"Steve decided that higher chairs were inelegant. Previous chairs may have fit you, but Apple no longer supports them." exchange.

I've also gotten more exposure to the iPhone, which has convinced me that a smarter phone would be cool, but that the iPhone is not the device for me. The gadget section of the most recent Law Technology News had a note on the Blackberry Curve 8320, which looks like a somewhat smart phone (but with actual buttons for the letters, so that text entry is more reliable), but that led me to something that I'd heard rumored, but have now discovered: T-Mobile has a setup where phones can use 802.11 where their coverage is unavailable. And I'm a month into another 2 years with AT&T.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Wireless iPhone ]

Study debunks theory on teen sex and delinquency:

But those are risks that other nations have mitigated with education, Harden and Turkheimer said, while U.S. educators wanting a piece of the nation's $200 million "abstinence only" budget must adhere to a curriculum that links sex to delinquency and explicitly precludes discussion of contraception.

The new study "really calls into question the usefulness of abstinence education for preventing behavior problems," Harden said, "and questions the bigger underlying assumption that all adolescent sex is always bad."

Via Mithras over at Gloria's oversexed mind.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Politics Sexual Culture ]

A while back I ended up with a shelf full of devices that had displays and stepper motors and buttons. They were prototypes, and I got them with the condition that they not go to anyone else in their semi-recognizable condition. This week I was down in the basement and realized that no matter what I was going to have to disassemble them and get rid of the cases, so I did, and since I've been playing with microcontrollers recently I grabbed a display and wired it up so that I could see if I could talk to it.

The only number on the back of the display was ACM-1601E, the datasheet that brought up wasn't too useful, but I guessed, based on the pin names, that it'd be roughly compatible with the Hitachi 44780 controller, and after a bit of digging through this LCD interfacing page I finally figured out that it may look to me like 1 line of 16 characters, but to the controller it was two lines of 8 characters.

Haven't had the guts to hook up the backlight to anything to see if it smokes yet...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Embedded Devices ]

First we picked on them a little, here on Flutterby. As no good dead goes unpunished they soon became Buy It Downtown.com - which is now hosted locally (on GeekLabs using "Widget") and is interesting from a 'creating a local currency' perspective. Times have changed, it's all done electronically, which is cool, but not as cool as Hoppy's wooden tokens, which were accepted at many kewl places besides the Stone Lion Tavern. It lacks 'anonymity' (they want the cards "registered" - no clue how to enforce that) which is something I like with the cards being used by UtiliJuice Prepaid Electric. A $20 "Juice" card is worth $20 and can be handed to someone else so they can use it to buy power.

Sometimes it seems I am forever re-writing the same applications over and over.. Will that be my Dante's style of purgatory?

[ related topics: Writing California Culture Currency ]

This afternoon Charlene and I took a tandem up to Petaluma and toodled around from for-sale sign to open house, looking at places. We saw a couple of "we could live there", a few "this is the nicest house in the neighborhood, that's not good", one "split level Victorian" (don't mind if it's not one floor height, but they shouldn't differ by a few inches here and there...), one "we might make an offer on this, but it'll be at least $60k lower because of comps" (although, as we research comps more, I think we'd be more in line offering $100k lower), and one "this is out of our price range, but it's freakin' beautiful".

That last one was a house refinished by Luedecke Woodworks, and I'd never thought I'd love fir that much, and it was the first place I've been utterly blown away by concrete countertops. The place was just gorgeous, and although Charlene and I have both been talking about tearing out fireplaces for more usable room, this place had a hearth and mantle that made us say "okay, maybe we do have a fireplace".

Because we're project people, we want a fixer, but we now know what we want it to look like when we've fixed it. Worth checking these folks' work out!

[ related topics: Dan's Life Real Estate Bicycling - Tandem Woodworking ]

All projects take X time, even the supposed 30 minute ones. Actually, 30 minute projects take x² while month long projects only take X *2. X is a constant and is equal to more time than you have to do a good job at the project, feature request, bug fix.. etc..

X also has additional multipliers including the Good Deed Factor, the Non-Profit Org Factor, the For A Loved One Factor, and the ClueLess DotCom Style Startup Factor.

We probably all need to take the pledge:

I hereby promise to not start another "small" project without a free month of immediate time and $5k up front.

[ related topics: Heinlein ]

Dear lazy web: Through various hand-me-downs, I've got an eBookWise reader. I see that PDFRead does conversions for PDFs, but before I go tie that into some huge toolchain that only works in landscape mode, anyone know how to dump HTML or something similarly simple in to this things format from Linux?

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

Uh. Yeah. FPS games are officially over: Low recoil 300 round per minute automatic shotgun. If Counter-Strike had ceased to be fun when they nerfed the Deagle and the Scout, this blasts it into total snooze territory.

[ related topics: Games Guns ]

Is there anything it won't cure? Cannabis Compound May Stop Metastatic Breast Cancer:

The compound found in cannabis, called cannabidiol (CBD), inhibits a gene, Id-1, that researchers believe is responsible for the metastatic process that spreads cells from the original tumor throughout the body.

Opting for a musical metaphor, senior researcher Pierre-Yves Desprez likened Id-1 to "an [orchestra] conductor. In this case, you shoot the conductor, and the whole orchestra is going to stop. If you shoot the violinist, the orchestra just continues to play."

But, man, like in a jam band, if you shoot the drummer the band will keep going, cuz you can't stop the music, man.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Music Bioinformatics Law ]

Queen's Brian May named as next Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University. Astrophysics, rock-n-roll, the only thing missing is a career in surgery.

John is looking for a terminal app for Leopard that doesn't suck. It's crap like this that keeps me way clear of the Mac for my personal use. To be fair, though, Windows doesn't suck any less on this and related issues.

More generally, I trained myself to use the escape key for Emacs "meta" long ago because of cross platform issues as to what that key to the immediate left of the spacebar meant.

[ related topics: John S Jacobs-Anderson Microsoft Macintosh ]

"The turkey at the White House really draws a crowd."

Oh, I see, they mean that thing with feathers that's a cousin of the one that's going into my oven in a couple days, not the one in the suit. Right.

[ related topics: Food Birds Race Real Estate ]

For those of you not reading our minds, we'd decided that the financial and legal advantages of marriage were worth it, considering that we've made some reasonable commitments to each other (and working up a good prenup was a process I highly encourage every couple to do). We asked Alec to officiate and Owen to witness, and figured we'd do something quick tonight. They brought a gazillion of their friends, most of whom we've met over the years. Much fun was had.

There'll be a big party sometime later, in a year or two. This was perfect for now. And when we get back from the Sierra I'll try to get a copy of Alec's ceremony online, it was very personal and very touching.

(and, no, not "touching" in that priestly sort of way...)

[ related topics: Dan's Life California Culture Marriage ]

And you thought global warming was bad? According to some cosmologists, our discovery of Dark Matter as actually shortened the life of the Universe! Apparently we've done the equivalent of opening the box containing Schroedenger's half-dead/half-alive cat.

I'm cashing in my IRA and heading to Tahiti while there's still time.

[ related topics: Heinlein Philosophy Gambling Global Warming ]

Greetings from The Buckeye Tree Lodge in Three Rivers, California. Yesterday we took a tandem and rode from here, just on the south side of Sequoia National Park, down into "town", stopping at the little tourist traps and artist shops along the way. And spending some time hanging out by one of the rivers.

Today we haven't planned out yet, other than that we're going to end up back home in time to get up for work tomorrow. Wifi is sketchy, apparently the link to the real world is by satellite. And it's too nice a day to be on the computer.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture California Culture Bicycling - Tandem ]

I downloaded a demo, then went nuts for Propellerheads Reason 4. It runs on MacOSX and Windows, I'm on WinXP.. It's so good that I don't feel guilty for booting into WinXP. On boot it detected my keyboard, downloaded 'controls' and loaded into a sane working state with a demo song ready to not only play, but for me to play along with. The sampled sounds, the incredible software synths, the drums, the looper.. the.. the.. Oh, it's way to much fun, and I really don't have time to play right now... but I'm making some time. "Electronic Music" has come a long way since my old ARP, and Reason blew my mind, let me get to playing with music/noise quickly without getting in the way, and has some incredible capabilities and sounds. I'll figure out Rosegarden on Linux soon, but it's still got some quirks and a learning curve.

[ related topics: Free Software Music Microsoft Open Source Software Engineering Work, productivity and environment Shoes Education ]

There'll be a long posting about yesterday's exploits, complete with pictures of riding the tandem through a tunnel cut in a fallen sequoia, standing on the top of Moro rock overlooking a four thousand foot deep canyon in Sequoia National Park, and amusingly bad Thai food, but while re-supplying on the way back home we saw an article about a guy dropping a camera off of Half Dome and another guy finding the memory card that almost got us to buy a Fresno Bee, except that in the midst of road trip mayhem we couldn't dig up $.50.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment Yosemite ]

Most forlorn headline of the current election cycle: "Perot voters still searching for a candidate".

[ related topics: Current Events Mythology Failure To Connect ]

Concern has been expressed that I may be "growing up". While I don't know if I'm yet ready to ditch the conventional furniture for a home ball pit (thanks, Shadow), I should point out that I've picked up a pair of Heelys, and I've only fallen on my ass twice.

If you're the sort of person who delights in confusing your autonomous motor system and teaching your reflexes how to do new things, I highly recommend 'em. The hardest part so far is getting used to the idea that I have to kick and then drop a heel behind, although there's clearly a lot left to learn. And shopping is way more fun now.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Invention and Design Sports ]

Danger West: Sponsored Links points out that Google's sponsored links have deterioriated to the point where they're rarely useful any more. Johannes Ernst talks a little bit about "how do identity providers make money?". Seems like an OpenID identity provider has the opportunity to build a real relationship, along the lines of what MySpace and Facebook can only aspire to, with their users, and part of that would be finding ways to build truly useful advertising.

[ related topics: New Economy Consumerism and advertising Net Culture LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]

This one's for Columbine: Saturday's "Least I Could Do":

Were you aware of something called 'The Louisiana Purchase'?

Someone actually paid money to buy Louisiana.

[ related topics: Humor ]

Some notes from yesterday's dawdling around in Sequoia National Park.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment Bicycling - Tandem ]

Letter from the FCC has arrived. I don't have the equipment or knowledge to do anything, but I can add KI6MZO to my list of identities.

[ related topics: Wireless Dan's Life ]

Emma Clarke is the voice of the London Underground, but she'll have no future contracts with them due to some spoof announcements she put up on her own web site. This Metafilter entry has mirrors of MP3s of her announcements. I laughed. Here's her take on Sodoku.

[ related topics: Humor ]

Dear TomTom,

A recent road trip made us think that an in-car nav system would be worth getting. We like that your systems run Linux, and are non-destructively hackable, we can apparently put our own applications on your platform and still switch back to the original firmware when we want that feature set.

So I went to your web site to try to figure out what the differences between your various products are. You had a "product selector", so I clicked on it. It let me check the features I thought were important. Unfortunately, it appeared to do nothing to tell me which devices had those features. So I checked the boxes next to two different devices, and it showed me a comparison between them (but there was, alas, no table showing all the differences between all 6 devices). At the bottom, below each column of features for a particular device, there was a link to take me to the "Product Page". This link does not always take me to the product page for the device in that column.

Nice effort, but a little attention to detail there would be cool.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Travel Automobiles Furniture ]

Edit: The Corte Madera Apple store called me and told me how to do it better next time by dealing directly with them rather than going through Apple's web site. I'm impressed!

All hardware sucks, so in making this observation I don't mean to praise any particular vendor: I'm going to physically drag the next person who makes great proclamations about Apple's design abilities down to the Apple store 20 minutes before opening, where all of the people are lined up with their malfunctioning hardware hoping to be one of the first lucky few to beat their way to the in-store kiosks to schedule an appointment for the day because the online appointment system hasn't been working correctly.

I want them to experience the nashing of teeth when the customers discover that it'll be another day or three before they can get someone to take in their malfunctioning laptop or display for warranty service because the "genius bar" booked up before they could get there.

I was merely dealing with a noisy fan (which should have been replaced last time I took the laptop in, a few weeks ago), and knew to get there a half an hour early to make sure I could get an appointment and to have my computer warmed up so that the problem exhibited itself (a problem when I was standing out in the cold in front of the store for thirty minutes, but a better system for dealing with hardware failures would serve Apple well.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Work, productivity and environment Graphic Design ]

Dr. J. Robert Cade, University of Florida researcher who invented Gatorade, dies at 80, of kidney failure. Hmmm...

[ related topics: Health Current Events ]

Argh. Went to print a bunch of images yesterday evening, CUPS misbehaved (big surprise there...) and I couldn't find the appropriate printer queue from the Gnome GUI, so I popped up Firefox, pointed it at port 631, and got:

This address is restricted: This address uses a network port which is normally used for purposes other than Web browsing. Firefox has canceled the request for your protection.

The Purple Dropbear has the rant I'd have written about the stupidities of this had I not found the solution to this issue in that rant, so I'll just repeat his step-by-step solution to this idiocy here:

• Go to about:config in your Firefox browser.
• Right click somewhere, and choose "New => String"
• In the setting Name box type "network.security.ports.banned.override"
• In the Setting Value box, type "1-65535". Yep, that's all of 'em
• Click OK

Interesting. I'm playing with pthreads a bit, so I've got a simple loop that increments a variable about a billion times, once just flat out, once locking around the increment. Linux laptop, Intel Core Duo T2450 at 2.00GHz, 3.6 seconds without locks, 58.8 seconds with locks. Mac Pro, 2 Dual-Core Intel Xeons at 2.66GHz, 2.7 seconds without locks, 62.1 seconds with locks.

Stupid benchmark, not significant in any way, except that it often feels that the Linux laptop is way snappier than the Mac desktop (and the Mac laptop that's in the shop right now), if the overhead of the OS and system library implementations is chewing up that additional CPU speed that may explain a lot...

[ related topics: Open Source Macintosh ]

Oh hell yes: British cyclist gets stopped and bullied by a newbie police officer ("young plod"), payback ensues....

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Sports Pedal Power Bicycling ]

Older white women join Kenya's sex tourists

MOMBASA, Kenya (Reuters) - Bethan, 56, lives in southern England on the same street as best friend Allie, 64.

They are on their first holiday to Kenya, a country they say is "just full of big young boys who like us older girls".

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Race ]

One of our hiking group sent along this world clock, interesting to watch "bicycles produced" versus "computers produced".

[ related topics: Movies Nature and environment Bicycling ]

I've got to admit that all of the material coming out on YouTube and similar places in support of the WGA strike has convinced me that... well... there's a reason I don't bother to watch TV. But Jay linked to this video saying:

funny rap is hard, if you're not Weird "Al"...

To which I'd respond that it's probably hard, I haven't attempted it, but there are some good funny rappers out there. Maybe it's just that we shouldn't be looking to TV writers to find it? I have a Marginal Prophets CD around here that I pump up occasionally...

Looking at the shirt of a flirt in a blond mini skirt / when she said she was a Catholic I told her I'd convert...

Those guys were doing nerd-core before nerd-core was cool.

Today Violet Blue had a link to some nerdcore that... well... I've had playing and been giggling over: Schaffer The Darklord (aka "STD") (warning, autoplay MySpace page, but check out "Nerd Lussst"), see also the full on video for "The Rappist".

[ related topics: Humor Music Technology and Culture Writing Television Video ]

Hmmm... an RFID experimentation kit that came from here related to a query about making bank cards with chips unreadable, but that makes me think that this plus a decent solenoid or worm-drive deadbolt might replace a key with some other RFID capable ID mechanism that I'm already carrying.

Any suggestions for an electrically actuated deadbolt and/or a backup mechanism when the power's out?

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery RFID ]

I'm building 1 simple XML gateway and one.. well complicated is an understatement, in XML/SOAP gateway, and I have to say good things (so far) about PHP's SOAP implementation, and a useful simple thing called: wsdl2php which makes calling a "WebService" via SOAP pretty easy. Even one written in .NET on MSIE and MS-SQL.

Now for the insanity. The 'WebService' I need to communicate with is pretty darn important, it should be locked behind firewalls and tunnels to do what it needs to. It was written by a 'Major' IT company and only runs on MS-SQL/IIS/.NET

This is their idea of security and authentication:

• It won't work on https/ssl for some reason (It says so in their docs),
• You get an authentication key (32 chars long) by doing an XML post to 'UserManager.asmx' with no login/password/ip or other info. It returns the 32 char key.
• This key expires in 60 minutes..
• All operations for the next XX minutes are 'authenticated' by handing back this key with other data in future requests..

I tried to figure out why not run 'simple auth' aka 'basic auth' on the web server, and I find out why: SOAP has an XML-ish version that works like this? which is usually post webserver handling/auth of the put.

Is it just me, or is SOAP a good idea gone bad?

[ related topics: Web development Content Management Work, productivity and environment Databases ]

I really didn't have much desire to see the film before this, but Chinese authorities warn about the dangers of imitating on-screen acts in Lust, Caution:

The Information Times quoted Yu Zaoze, a gynaecologist with the Guangzhou Modern Hospital. "Most of the sexual manoeuvres in Lust, Caution are abnormal body positions," he said. "Only women with comparatively flexible bodies that have gymastics or yoga experience are able to perform them. For average people to blindly copy them could lead to unnecessary physical harm."

I think I've got my weekend activities all planned now...

[ related topics: Quotes Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Mike Kelley had a link to The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet interviewing the cast of the Midwest Teen Sex Show. It isn't nearly as entertaining as one of the episodes of the Midwest Teen Sex Show, but watching the "psychologist" on the panel fumble through the tired old indications that, in fact, she hasn't talked to a teenager in a decade or two, is... well... not entertaining, and kind of depressing in that it reinforces all of the stereotypes of ignorance and idiocy that we associate with the folks who are preaching at kids, but instructive.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture Pop Culture ]